News: Optoelectronics
16 June 2021
IEEE Best Paper Award recognizes Rockley’s work on co-packaged optics
The IEEE Communications Society says that the 2021 Charles Kao Award for Best Optical Communications & Networking Paper has been awarded to a team from Rockley Photonics Ltd of Oxford, UK and Pasadena, CA, USA (which develops integrated silicon photonic chipsets and supplies modules for high-volume sensor and communication products) for their paper ‘Reimagining datacenter topologies with integrated silicon photonics’, published in the July 2018 edition of the IEEE/OSA Journal of Optical Communications and Networking (JOCN).
The paper presents Rockley’s pioneering work in co-packaged optics (CPO), demonstrating the technical feasibility of integrating CMOS switching functionality with single-mode optical interfaces within the same package.
“IEEE awards represent the pinnacle of technological achievement and we’re extremely proud of our team’s success,” says chief executive Dr Andrew Rickman. “Co-packaging optics with electronics enables us to rearchitect the data-center network to achieve significant efficiency gains in terms of data processing and power usage.”
Rockley is leveraging CPO to design high-density pluggable optical modules with at least 800Gb/s of capacity.
The IEEE Communications Society Awards Committee evaluates nominated papers based on the extent to which the works open new lines of research, envision bold approaches to optical communication and networking, formulate new problems to solve, and essentially enlarge the field of optical communications and networking. Papers published in the prior three calendar years of JOCN are eligible for the award. The key selection criteria are quality, exposition, novelty, and impact.
This work establishes the capability of Rockley’s unique silicon photonics platform to address next-generation data communications. Rockley is in the process of leveraging its versatile platform in the consumer healthcare space, which it believes will drive wafer volumes and economies of scale that will ultimately benefit a variety of market verticals.
In March, Rockley entered into a definitive agreement to combine with SC Health Corp, a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company, that will result in Rockley becoming a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the symbol RKLY.
